Daughter: Parent's murder-suicide was out of love

CLEVELAND COUNTY, N.C. - Glenn and Linda Haynes died Friday in a possible mercy killing in Cleveland County.

“He was all about taking care of her and making sure that her needs were met,” Angie Michael, the couple’s daughter, told Channel 9.

Michael wanted to share her parents’ love story. The couple had been married for 16 years, and even though Glenn wasn't her biological father, Michael called him Dad.

“It was undeniable, undeniable that they loved each other,” Michael said.

Deputies said Glenn shot and killed his wife Linda Friday, then called 911 before turning the gun on himself. Detectives are investigating whether it was or was not a mercy killing but Michael said she knows it was out of love. Letters were left to family members with funeral plans and while she can't say for sure it was planned, she knows her mother was struggling with kidney failure and had been in a lot of pain.

“She wanted peace,” Michael said. “She couldn’t do the things she used to do.”

Michael called the couple's final act a disaster for her family. Her young daughter spoke with Glenn Friday morning and they had no idea it would be for the last time. But they hope the couple who shared a home on Midway Avenue are still together and now at peace.

“I don’t think they wanted to be burden anymore,” Michael said. “And I think they did this so they wouldn’t have to be, and they didn’t want to be alone.”

“I'm shocked. I just wouldn't have expected this,” neighbor Becky Southerd said Friday. “I guess he had watched her suffer for as long as he could stand it.”

Smith wondered if the two planned it together. She's heartbroken by the loss, but also wonders if, in a tragic way, it wasn't his last act of showing how much he loved her.

“I have heard that they wanted to go together,” she said. “I think it ended exactly like she wanted and like he wanted it. They wanted to be together.”

Deputies do not suspect foul play and said there is no history of domestic violence or calls out to the home.